Things Unseen: (An epic fantasy adventure series) (The Caris Chronicles Book 1) (3 page)

He would have clothes, some food, his bow and arrows, a sword, and now a horse.
More than enough for a man to make his way in the world,
he thought with determination.
Though not enough to provide for a wife, and never enough to pay a bride price.
Not that that had ever really been a possibility anyway.
The thought came unbidden with a stab of pain in his chest, adding to the familiar ache he had carried for the last few years.

****

The soldiers had set up camp on the north side of the village in the Robin’s Field. The few surviving villagers had gathered the Rocweeds intended for the evening’s fire and created a pyre. In an area so barren, they never used wood for burning. It would not need to be a large fire, though close to six hundred had been slain, there was not much left of them.

Caris stood by her house, not sure what to do. Someone had cleared the area in front of her property; most of the activity was concentrated in the middle of the village now. Though she knew she should help, she could not bring herself to approach the people who knew how she had killed her mother.

Caris decided that when her fellow villagers left to find another village or city to settle in, she would not go with them. A surge of excitement welled up in her, hope that she had not felt in years lifted her. Guiltily she squashed it. How could she be happy when so many of her loved ones had just died? The thought could not be fully quenched, however, that though she would mourn, she might also find a life. It would be a difficult one, full of hardship, she was sure, but perhaps it would also be interesting, at the least, it would be different.

At her front door, Caris found her arrows. Someone had removed all of them from the dead derks before the soldiers had dragged them to a massive mound outside the village. Caris wondered that anyone had the stomach for such a gruesome job. Though such quality wood was precious, she had determined to find some more and make new arrows rather than retrieve them.

They had not been washed; there was so much work to be done, her benefactor would not have had the time to go to the creek
. It must have been one of my sister’s husbands looking out for me for the sake of his wife.

With a stab of guilt, Caris realised she hadn’t even found out who among her sisters had survived. Still she could not bring herself to go amongst her people. She would go to the funeral, she decided; she knew she could not stay away from that no matter how much she wasn’t wanted there. It would be dark and she could hang back. Though she would never see any of them again, she wanted to know who had survived.

Caris picked up her arrows and headed down to the creek. When she arrived, she washed them numbly. Finishing, she sat down beside the water. Loss hit her ─ not the loss of her family, friends, and home; she wasn’t ready to face that yet, but the loss of this creek where she had spent so many of the best hours of her life.

This thin corridor of paradise, in an otherwise bare rocky landscape, had been the destination of many of the villagers whenever they had a spare afternoon, or if they just had to escape the heat or take a break. There were plenty of places along its shady course that people frequented, but this spot behind her field had always been her favourite.

She had spent so many happy hours as a child here with her sisters, and as they grew and moved on to their new responsibilities, she had enjoyed coming on her own to wade in the water and sit on the bank under the trees, watching the birds and listening to the merry tune of the creek.

Caris watched the water splashing over rocks now, and a deep longing filled her. A longing for her sisters to be sitting beside her, for her parents to be safe in their house, for everything to be as it was yesterday. The beauty of this spot normally came with a deep sense of peace, but now it brought only grief.

She sat quietly with tears creeping down her cheeks. Part of her wanted to be preparing for her departure, but in truth, there was not much for her to do, and she knew that when she was done, she would only be anxious to leave. Caris had determined that the morrow’s morning would be the best time to depart. She still hadn’t decided where she was going but she wanted to give the derks time to move away. She would go to the funeral tonight, sleep, and head out in the morning with a full day to begin her journey. There was no reason to put it off longer than that.

As the sun headed down on the horizon, it began to cool under the trees by the water. Caris said goodbye to the place that had given her so much joy in her life. She headed back to her house, mentally organising what provisions she would take. She was used to going on three-day hunts with her father and some of the other young people. Caris figured that the same supplies would do for a longer trek. It seemed surreal to her that she would not be returning this time.

The house should feel different,
she mused as she gathered her things together.

She felt disconnected – from her home, the village, the people preparing the funeral... the horror that had filled her afternoon.

It just feels like mum and dad are out at one of my sister’s properties for the afternoon. It should feel emptier, a place I dread to enter alone
. As Caris began packing her small leather hunting-bag, she garnered some comfort from her familiar surroundings. While she was here in her house it felt like Mum, Dad, and Cherri were still partially with her; briefly she let herself imagine that she was going hunting and that her dad would be going with her.

When her daydream was ended and her hunting gear packed, she began to assemble the extra provisions she would be taking with her.

In her parents room, Caris found the small heavy leather purse that held her parent’s fortune. Stifling the surge of grief that threatened to overwhelm her, she pushed the silver under the rest of her gear refusing to think of how this money was supposed to have supported her parents for many years to come.

She headed to the kitchen. Caris would hunt for most of her food and would gather greens along her way, but she figured, she may as well take some hard bread, cheese, and biscuit to last as long as it would.

She tried to think if there was anything else she would need. She ran through a list of ideas, considered taking the hunting outfit and boots Cherri had hardly used, but as she planned to make some kind of life for herself among people, she decided she could buy what she needed when the time came. In the end, Caris opted for just a simple dress to wear when she stayed in towns or villages for more than a night.

Maybe a town would be a good place to settle; surely, she could find something meaningful to do in a place with so many people. The thought of trying to find her way in a city scared her, but a town was an exciting prospect. She wished she had Cherri’s ability with a needle. She had heard of people in towns who spent their entire time making clothes to sell, but she knew someone would need to be blind before they parted with money for something she had made.

Having finished her packing, Caris wandered idly around the house waiting for full dark. She knew the funeral fire would not be lit before that. She moved aimlessly from room to room absentmindedly straightening the furniture. Finally, she got the broom out and began to sweep the floors. She imagined her mum’s exclamation of surprise if she walked in the door now. Though never lazy, Caris had always preferred to do her work out of doors. “Oh Mum,” she sobbed crumpling to the floor. “I wanted to save you!” Caris pleaded for understanding.

She cried until completely spent, remaining on the grainy wooden floor until dark.

The knots in Caris’ lower back protested as she pushed herself to her feet.
I can’t believe it was only this morning that I was digging rocweeds out of our field.
A lump filled her throat. What she wouldn’t do now, to be able to work that field for the rest of her days, if only she could have her family restored to her.

Caris went to the food room and, pulling the cover from a bucket, splashed water on her face. It was lukewarm and did little to refresh her.

She went to her room to brush her hair and change her clothes. Though she didn’t intend for anyone to see her, the dead deserved her respect. She added the hairbrush and a cake of soap to her backpack. They were things she didn’t normally bother with when hunting, but would be needed for this trip. “Who knows what else I haven’t thought of.”

Judging that everyone else would be gathered by now, Caris lifted her chin, pulled back her shoulders, and headed out her door and toward the fire pit.

When she arrived, people were milling around unsure what to do. Most had obviously stopped at home to clean themselves up. They stood, shuffling feet and staring at the ground as if waiting for someone to give them directions. A few looked haunted; many just looked lost and confused. Some of the mothers were weeping in a way that suggested they hadn’t really stopped since the attack.

A few hadn’t cleaned up and, as Caris watched them, she realised they were acting strangely. Daneal was gibbering to no one, Belinda was staring into space and jumping and letting out small screams at intervals, while Jodha sat in the dirt stabbing the air with his knife. Caris didn’t know what she had expected but she wasn’t prepared for this. She had spent the afternoon so caught up in her own grief she hadn’t thought of how the rest of the survivors were coping.

When the sergeant arrived, with a few of his band, everyone sighed with relief. The village had had funerals before of course, but no one had the words to say in the wake of such a huge catastrophe. The sergeant walked to the front of the fire pit and began to talk of loss and grief, of loved ones and what they meant, and how they enriched their lives. He only spoke for a short while but in that time, he brought a small measure of healing to those present. Even the men cried openly as the sergeant talked.

Caris, standing at the back in the shadow of a low house, looked around the small circle of friends. Jani was there with her husband and two youngest children. Living at the northern end of the village had been their salvation. The King’s Horse had arrived in time to save them. Caris smiled, for the first time since the derk’s attack, she felt a small measure of happiness. The sergeant wrapped up his talk by speaking of how their loved ones had passed onto a better place, and though they would mourn them and often cry for missing them, they owed it to their memory to try to pick up the pieces and move forward.

Then his men came forward and Caris noticed they were carrying something. As they reached the front, they lowered about thirty firebrands to the ground. The sergeant took the lighter lamp and, lighting the brands one by one, started handing them out. As people received them, they said a quiet word of goodbye and threw them onto the huge pile of rocweeds. It caught quickly and fire leapt up, hiding the last of the victims from sight.

Caris wondered at the thoughtfulness of the soldiers to have prepared so many brands for them. It was custom for the close family of someone who died to each have a brand to throw, but no one had thought to prepare any today. Caris longed to throw a brand herself, but her humiliation held her back. As each person said their goodbye, they wandered away and back to their home. There would be no wake tonight.

When the last villager was gone and the soldiers were leaving, Caris went forward and, collecting one of the remaining brands from the ground, lit it from the lamp herself and, with a sob, threw it onto the fire. The sergeant watched her. Without acknowledging him, Caris headed back to her home.

Caris had planned to leave early the next morning, but after a sleepless night, she had finally drifted off as light began to seep in the window. She awoke mid morning to the sound of the sergeant’s voice out the front of her house.

Getting up, she pulled on her hunting pants, shirt, and soft leather boots; and went to the front of her house to see what he was doing. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she wandered groggily out to join the circle of soldiers who were receiving their orders. Apparently, a small group had already been sent to organise an escort for the villagers, back to the city or towns where some of them had relatives.

A few had opted to stay, their love of the wild land and the home of their birth, overcoming their fear of isolation. A score of survivors, however, were glad to accept the safety an escort of King’s Horse would provide. Their once beloved home had become a place of terror and grief. So few had survived, and so many loved ones had died. Their once thriving village now offered only a future of hard labour, working the land with too few hands. The broken people could not contemplate living with the constant fear and isolation their ravaged village, five days ride from their nearest neighbours, offered.

The sergeant continued giving last minute instructions on rounding up more provisions, both for the refugees and for The King’s Horse who were continuing on their journey. It appeared this band was heading out past the frontier to join The King in battle. They had been riding hard from the north, and only luck had brought them to the village at the time of the raid.

Without thinking, Caris stepped forward. “I want to join The King’s army,” she called out. The sergeant, a good-looking man with a mop of blond hair, blue eyes, and a clear complexion, stared at her intently as if trying to see into her very soul. Slowly, but with certainty, he replied,

“All who wish to join The King’s army are welcome.” Caris waited for the ‘but’. None came. She had only just realised she was accepted, was beginning to smile, when a voice she knew, off to her side, called out,